Building the right group to support your dental practice is critical.

Who do you employ? What do you call your employees? I want to challenge you think of your employees in a new way.

The IRS calls them employees. However, no one really likes that term. They are so much more than that.

Staff is a more professional term, but it also makes me think of a staph infection. This doesn’t describe the support that you have behind the scenes.

Many business offices like to call themselves a team. This isn’t a very good reflection of the monetary part of your business. While you may be working together to ultimately achieve the same goal, you are the owner, the leader.

In my business, I prefer to hire ‘Multipliers’. Multipliers are clones, someone who can be another set of hands when you have too much on your plate, be your right-hand man. Or they can add benefit to your business by providing additional skills that you don’t have.

The purpose of a multiplier is to take on the more tedious or cumbersome tasks which multiplies your time and allows you to focus on more valuable tasks that help grow your business.

The next time you go to hire someone, I want you to think of hiring your very own multiplier. Someone who can help build and better your business. Someone who can multiply your time.

In this week’s video you’ll learn:

A new way to think of your employees

The meaning of a multiplier

How you can benefit from hiring a multiplier

Please take a few minutes and watch the video above– do it for you and for your practice.

Are you not getting the number of referrals you wish to see?

Maybe you are going through your systems but things are connecting so that you see the results you are looking for?

Let’s talk about that and who’s responsible for it.

In your own practice, do you have some team members that their whole family comes to your office and all their friends on a regular basis? Aunt Betty, Uncle John and Uncle Fred, don’t forget the cousins- Susie, Christina, Joe, and of course, Grandma Pat who always brings cookies when she comes in…

And then there are other team members. The one’s you don’t see any of their friends or family members. You know they are married but you have only seen the husband in once last year when he broke a tooth.

This is a problem. If they won’t refer their own family, then they aren’t asking existing patients for referral either!

And even worse, the team member goes elsewhere for their dental care because, “Dr. Ross is a dear friend of the family that we have done to forever. He has all my records and he would be crushed if I stopped seeing him?!”

I want to share a real case study.

I observed a small office struggle with referrals. It consists of 1 doctor, 1 front desk, 1 hygienist and 1 assistant. Things were going well, running smoothly, however they just weren’t getting many referrals from the hygienist and the dental assistant.

After talking to them for months and making sure they were both skilled & trained properly on asking for referrals, we learned that they just weren’t comfortable referring to the office. As clinical team members, they both felt that was not their duty.

OUCH!

BIG Red Flag! If someone is working in your office and isn’t comfortable referring family or friends, that is an issue and a conversation needs to happen. You need to find out why. They may seem to be the best employee by doing the tasks you give them each day, but if they aren’t willing to refer others that they care about to your office…a change needs to take place.

Either you need to make a change in how you run your business to build that confidence or they need to make a change in their thinking.

If you’re in a relationship and the person you are with doesn’t want to tell anyone about you, that’s not a good thing.

EVERYONE IN THE PRACTICE is responsible for referrals. If you are a part of the team, it is a part of your job to promote the practice.

So if you aren’t getting those internal referrals and you’re system works well, maybe it’s not the system. Maybe it’s the people working in the system and it might be time for a hard conversation with you and with them.

In this week’s video, you’ll learn:

The importance of evaluating your referrals

Everyone is responsible for referrals

How to improve your referrals

Please take a few minutes and watch the video above– do it for you and for your practice.

What is the best type of person to hire and who should be working in your office? Learn how to evaluate your current team members and how you practice works together.

In previous trainings, I’ve talked about hiring multipliers and not just staff or employees. When you look at your current team, I want you to think that every day is an opportunity for every member to rise up and improve by upleveling, the top level that you can.

What do I mean by the uplevel or upleveling?

Business is always evolving, advancing, moving forward. Change is imminent and if you aren’t growing, you are dying. You might have some employees however, that are stagnant. They have plateaued in their development. They do the bare minimum and don’t move forward as your practice does.

Typically, employees are only let go when they are a huge problem or they are moving away. But it is easy for them to fly under the radar if an employee is just sitting there taking not causing any ripples, just clocking in and out each day.

It is important to advance as a practice… and as a person.

If a team member is just doing her job, that is great. However it isn’t enough. She isn’t contributing to the rest of the practice. This employee may have fit in when first hired at that stage of your practice, but as time goes on, it isn’t working out so well.

Don’t be afraid to let someone go for fear of not being able to find someone else. Over and over, time shows there will always be someone better out there. Everyone on your team can be replaced. Including you doctor.

Dentists aren’t usually as experienced as other businesses when it comes to hiring. Smaller team size and longevity of employees doesn’t give you the opportunity to be skilled at hiring because you just don’t get enough practice.

I challenge you to get really good at hiring. This will help you to hire better employees and keep your turnover low. Uplevel your team and always keep your eye out for those that are a little better than you or your current employees.

In this week’s video, you’ll learn:

How to evaluate your current team

What does upleveling mean

How to uplevel for growth

Please take a few minutes and watch the video above– do it for you and for your practice.